


.L9^ 



! ''dCi 1^ (O. lAr, 



E 457 
.15 
• L23 
Copy I 



S~ii 



U 



A 






\SL 



WARD H. LAMON 



AND 



THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE. 



\tD 



i-i^e^niana? 



My Dear General: 

Permit me to thank you and other friends at Bloomington 
for many late attentions, among which I feel compelled to 
mention your last letter and its enclosure — a copy of the 
Weekly Pa7itagraph, of April 25, 1866. In it I find an article 
taken from the 'Jacksonville Journal, a portion of which the 
Journal, in turn, credits to the Chicago Tribune ; all of which 
is supposed to have heen suggested by a letter written by me 
to President Johnson and published pretty extensively by the 
loyal press of the country. 

For this gross co-mpound of vulgar defamation the Panta- 
graph acknowledges itself indebted to the joint mendacity of 
the Tribune and the Journal, and then, that these " apples of 
gold" might not be without their " pictures of silver," it 
dishes up the whole with a few mild and very apparent slan- 
ders of its own. As skilled counterfeiters always find baser, 
meaner, and more ignorant criminals to "shove" the false 
coin, so this man seems to think himself generally employed 
to retail all the impudent calumnies which his industrious scis- 
sors can glean from his exchanges. He seems to have a nat- 
ural bent for this menial part of the business of newspaper 
defamation ; but he ought never to aspire above it, and will 
inevitably spoil any well got-up slander which he attempts to 
amend while passing through his willing but clumsy hands. 
He will never succeed at the business of original lying, for the 
simple reason that he has not sufiicient mind to lie well or 
plausibly. The practice of this vice is not so simple a thing 
after all. To excel asthe great exemplars of the vice have 
excelled, to become notorious and earn a livelihood as a mere 
common defamer, to have his name enrolled among the stars 
of the profession, beside those of Barrere, White, or Cono- 
ver, a man must not only be a knave, but he must be a keen, 
shrewd, quick-witted, and long-headed knave. This fellow 
of the Pantagrapli is doubtless a knave, and ambitious of 
doing all the malicious mischief he can ; but his effort in my 



case convinces me that if he is a very despicable creature, he 
is also a very harmless one. If all his falsehoods are as trans- 
parent and ill-contrived as the one he aimed at me, he might 
scribble on forever to the injury of nobody. " We need sim- 
ply to state," he says, "that here, where Mr. L. was well 
known for six years, he was 7iever trusted as a Republican, and 
we all wondered at Mr. Lincoln's confidence in such a man." 
His memory, as you will see, is very short ; indeed, the pro- 
verb attributes " short memories " to all his class. Everybody 
in that section of the State is well aware that I was twice " 
elected district attorney on the Republican ticket by the nu- 
merous counties of the eighth judicial district, the first time 
including the capital of the State. In 1856 I received more 
votes than any other candidate on the ticket, and in 1860 I 
was unanimously chosen by the people to the same office. This 
bit of history will show that Mr. Lincoln's "confidence" m 
me was shared by all his immediate felloA^-citizens and by all 
mine, and that, too, at the very time this innocent man de- 
scribes himself as being in a state of absolute ''wonder'' at 
Mr. Lincoln's regard for me. It is hardly probable that the 
feeble breath of such a simpleton and such a scamp will out- 
Aveigh the recorded verdict of a whole people. 

I am not exactly sure that I ever saw the editor of the 
Jacksonville Journal His contribution to this exquisite 
patchwork of slander seems to have been entirely gratuitous— 
an amateur piece of scurrility, merely to employ the fingers 
which had a natural itching for the work. I was never a 
candidate for Congress, as he asserts, and of course never 
asked his support. If he is the man I suspect him to be, I 
have had but one interview with him for years; he then 
appeared as a pitiful mendicant, whose ambition was limited 
to the plunder of my purse. He succeeded in relieving me 
of a few hundred dollars in the shape of a loan, and it is not 
worth while to remark, that the conscious rascal has ever since 
preferred other society to mine. I have only heard of him 
since as a sort of political vagabond t)r hack, " at your ser- 
vice," for a small gratuity— an excellent hand to suggest a 
stratagem for reaching the bottom of a decent man's pocket. 



B 

or for calumniating a pure and honorable reputation. Having 
no character to sell or to lose, he can be had cheap, and is not 
particular about the kind of work he is required to do. He 
will spew out his foul aspersions upon the purest and noblest 
name in the land with as little scruple as he would borrow 
money or puff the grog-shop that gave him free drinks. 

I am also informed that a clerical imposter, by the name of 
Hammond, has amused himself by circulating and enlarging 
upon these slanders in his paper at Danville. Courts of jus- 
tice do not take the evidence of persons convicted of infamous 
crimes, nor do the public, credit the utterances of a debauched 
preacher or a canting libertine. This fellow, a clergyman 
after the Onderdonk and Kalloch pattern, a pastor rising 
fresh from the embraces of a prostituted parishioner, may 
pollute my name by uttering it, but can surely leave no stain 
on my character. 

When the Tribune article first appeared, I took some pains 
to learn which particular one of Mr. Lincoln's old traducers 
had turned his attention to me. A call upon one of the 
editors here, (who denied all knowledge of it,) and a little 
further inquiry, led me to the conclusion that Horace White 
might reasonably claim the honor of that elegant and truthful 
composition. He evidently intended this trashy string of 
falsehoods to be as brutal in effect as it was in temper, and if 
he lacked the facts necessary to a formidable assault, he would 
make up that little defect by malicious and impudent asser- 
tions. In White's view of the case, I was simply offensively 
honest and consistent, and it is, of course, perfectly natural 
that he should belie and traduce me. By a corrupt abuse of 
his confidential relations to a congressional committee, the 
fellow amassed a handsome sum in whiskey speculations, and 
in his purchase of an interest in the Tribune with this hire of 
official debasement there was a sort of eminent propriety. 
"Baseness was an instinct in him ;" it was an impulse of his 
nature to seek this thriving band of shameless calumniators — 
calumniators who knew no tie of political or personal fidelity ; 
to whom plunder was everything, honor and shame were 
nothing; who pretended to have political sentiments, not 



\ 



because they were blessed with a conscience, but because they 
had a newspaper, and by a union of venality, calumny, and 
treachery, it could be made to pay. Where else could this 
creature have found congenial society and congenial work ? 
The hand of this unclean scamp is against whatever is pure 
and decent in society, as naturally and inevitably as Falstaff 
fell to lechery and his cups, and therefore his proper place 
was the Tribune office. 

It is a sufficient answer to all the statements of hi^ article 
that they formed the staple of much discussion in the news- 
papers, in Congress, and elsewhere, and that several delega- 
tions of my personal enemies retailed these identical slanders 
to the ear of President Lincoln himself. Mr. Wilson, Mr. 
Hale, Mr. Grimes, or Mr. Washburn e might tell Mr. White 
with what contempt and disgust they were received. With 
disdain and indignation he repulsed all the eiforts of that pow- 
erful and malignant conspiracy to defraud me of my good 
name as an officer and a man. Some of mymaligners are not 
likely to forget the brief and pithy sentences in which the 
President expressed these sentiments. 

Mr. Lincoln found it impossible to betray his friend for 
the single reason that he had been loaded with the falsehoods 
of a vile faction, which had only for the moment ceased its 
treacherous warfare upon liim to begin it upon ine. And 
when, in the fear that my continuance in place might embar- 
rass him, I tendered my resignation, he again and again re- 
fused to accept it, witli the assurance that when I laid down 
my office it should not be with his consent. Solel}" in defer- 
ence to his views I held it, though unprofitable and unpleasant 
to me, until after his death, when I im})roved the first oppor- 
tunity to retire. 

It is perfectly true, as my assailants allege, that I did issue 
an order to keep mischievous meddlers and malicious gossips — 
even though they 'mir/ht be members of Congress — from nosing 
and prying about the jail. I did not think it fit that some of 
the persons wlio claimed this right slmuld be continually con- 
federating and sweltering with negroes in my cells. On one 
occasion I withheld a negro struuipel, connnitted to my cus- 



tody, from the arms of her paramour for several days, -which 
proved a frightful scandal to the Military Governor and a 
portion of the United States Senate, but which Mr. Lincoln 
deemed a very proper thing to do. This is what this Horace 
White calls "the hand of oppression laid heavily on the col- 
ored people of the District." If he will divest himself of his 
prejudices in favor of amalgamated society, he will see in this 
only a benevolent attenipt to protect the morals of the ne- 
groes. To be sure these unfortunate people have since be- 
come " the wards of the nation," but they were then mine, 
and as the object of all legal punishment is in part the refor- 
mation of the criminal, I cannot understand upon what prin- 
ciple of official duty I could have permitted the negroes under 
my care to associate with such visitors as I have referred to. 
White's individual antecedents are probably of no sort of 
importance to anybody; but as a perfect type of a very infa- 
mous class, he may deserve a word or two more. It so hap- 
pened that the despicable faction which he, as a hireling, 
served, gave Mr. Lincoln's administration about the only 
serious trouble it ever had. He himself was the "On to 
Richmond" correspondent of the Tribune, and the mischief he 
did was precisely commensurate with his mean ability. Mr. 
Lincoln gave one of the Tribune editors the lucrative oiEce of 
postmaster at Chicago, and another the largest cotton per- 
mit ever issued, (by the way, this was given to the only gen- 
tleman I ever knew connected with this filthy sheet,) and the 
Tribune office controlled a large amount of the executive patron- 
age in Illinois; but this generous eifort to appease their 
cormorant appetites only stimulated them to publish more 
venomous and mendacious assaults upon him and his policy. 
Depraved and insolent speculators in the blood and credit 
of the country, they took up the war-cries of Wendell 
Phillips, and denounced Abraham Lincoln as an "obstacle" 
to the devilish progress of the radical scheme, not for re- 
storing, but for dissevering the Union. They united them- 
selves with those atrocious conspirators, who sought to depose 
him from office and proclaim a dictator in the person of Fre- 
mont or Ben. Wade. Because he was wise and merciful, 



they painted liim as weak and imbecile. Because he "waged 
the war in no spirit of conquest or subjugation, but solely 
for the supremacy of the Union and the Constitution," 
they joined the infidels and red republicans and pronounced 
him a Pharaoh, who would not "let the people go." On their 
own theory they proceeded to make themselves his " lice 
and flies"' — his intolerable curse and nuisance — to the very 
hour of his death. Then they sang brutal and impious 
hymns of praise to the Almighty for removing him who "had 
been so clear in his great office," and putting in his room one 
who despised the weak and temporizing thought of restoring 
the peace and integrity of the country, but would constitute 
himself a fatal scourge to the Avhole people of the South. They 
licked their lips over his blood and thanked God that now they 
might embroil their country still deeper, and like cowardly 
wolves and hyenas, they might strip and tear and mangle a 
defenceless and prostrate people. His death was a joyous event 
to them, and for aught I know their incendiary calumnies 
may have inspired his assassin. At all events, if Booth had 
wrapped his bullet in a shred of the Chicago Tribune^ he 
might have lodo-ed a vindication of his crime in the brain of 
his victim. They had already assassinated, so far as in them 
lay, the good name of that pure and noble victim — and he their 
constant and habitual benefactor! They "stabbed him in a 
friendly embrace," for they took his patronage Avithout stint, 
and then stung his heart with cruel and persistent defama- 
tion. 

They embittered his mightiest toils and baulked his dearest 
purposes when tlie destinies of the nation were trembling in 
the balance, and his holiest ambition was to save it. Such arc 
the men who, for the mere gratification of slandering some- 
body, have chosen to depict me as a "hyena feasting upon the 
dead body of Lincoln." I leave you to draw the parallel be- 
tween us. No one knew Mr. Lincoln better, none loved him 
more than I. My friendship did not begin Avith his oflicial 
career. I Wiis near him in private life ; I was near him in all 
the darkest hours of the late struggle; I was near him Avhen 
llic fii-^t )-;it ional hope of peace dawned upon the land. In 



truth, I might say without ofiense to the people of his State 
and mine, that I retained his confidence unshaken as he 
retained my affections unbroken, until his own life was offered 
up the last great sacrifice to domestic discord, on the very 
threshold of peace, and in the actual blaze and glory of the 
nation's triumph. 

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

WARD H. LAMON, 

Washington, D. C. 
General Asahel Gridley, 

Bloomington, Illinois. 



I 



lllllllllllllllilllllllllllllllllHllllllllllilllllllll 
012 025 281 1 



